14 DAY TRIAL // The February collision between a Soviet-era satellite and an American telecommunications one has also triggered a large wave of discussions related to space security, alongside an increased alert level related to space flying. Since the accident, which sent thousands of little debris into space, the danger level in orbit has increased significantly, causing space agencies to worry about future missions to objectives such as the space telescopes of the International Space Station. No spacecraft design can withstand a blast from a junk fragment smaller than 1 centimeter at this point, let alone from one larger than 10 cm. Traveling at thousands of miles per hour, there is nothing that can stop them in their tracks.
Just recently, the crew of the ISS had to take shelter aboard their Soyuz “life boat,” as a piece of debris that was not monitored swung dangerously close to the $100-billion construction. Less than two weeks afterwards, when the Discovery space shuttle was docked on the station, another fragment forced the NASA spacecraft to fire its engines while still attached to the station, driving them both out of the way.
The new debris that were formed due to the satellite collision have joined some 200,000 other pieces larger than 1 cm, and also a few tens of millions pieces of junk that are smaller than that.
One of the risks that exist in orbit right now is a cascade effect, if one of the debris hits another satellite and disintegrates it. The large cloud of debris that would be generated would undoubtedly hit more and more of the machines, until all those circling the Earth within a certain range would be destroyed. Naturally, such a situation is unacceptable, but there's not much anyone can do about it now. The February collision, coupled with the Chinese anti-satellite test in 2007 – which generated over 2,500 pieces of junk – have already made the odds of that happening slightly greater.
Both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have proclaimed their intentions to construct debris-tracking surveillance networks that would keep an eye on all space junk larger than 10 centimeters. The American agency has already said that it plans to track all satellites in orbit by this October, and a network of surveillance station is already in place. Just recently, ESA has announced that it intends to track debris as well, and efforts are now in motion to find observatories capable of taking on the task.
The Europeans also have plans to build space-based sensors, as in satellites equipped with optical telescopes, able to directly observe the other satellites in orbit, without having to peer through clouds or bad weather to do so. The system, officials share, would be especially efficient for observing targets in high orbits, such as geosynchronous ones (GEO).